Paths to Truth

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Om Namah Sivaya

 

Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here in this world? These are the questions the Hindu asks. He thinks if a person does not know the answers, there is something wrong with him. Such ignorance is like blindness: unnatural or a kind of disease.

In a village of India were five blind men who lived together. One day they happened to come near an animal which someone told them was an elephant. "What is an elephant like?" they asked. They were invited to feel its body. "Why, an elephant is like a pillar," said the first. He had felt only its leg. "No, no, it is like a barrel," said another, who had felt only the belly. A third said, "It is like a rope," for he had felt the tail, and a fourth, "like a hose"; he had felt its trunk. "It is like a winnowing-fan," said the last man, who had felt only the ear. So they began to argue among themselves. Each said that his description of the elephant was the true one.

It is the same with Truth, says the Hindu, who loves telling this story. His ancient books, the Vedas, say, "The Truth is One; people call it by various names." All of us, like the blind men, find a part of the truth and think we have grasped it all. But truth itself must always be One and the same.

India, the homeland of the Hindus, is a land of many faiths. Most Indians belong to the oldest one, and are called Hindus. Really there is no such thing as "Hinduism", because these people never used that word, and never thought of their faith as being very different from other faiths. God, to the Hindu, is like our elephant. He is Truth, understood by different people in different ways. Hindus speak of religion, not "religions", saying there is but one religion -- the religion of Man. It is his search for Truth.

This search goes on in many ways, by different paths. Each great world faith is a road by which men travel to the top of the mountain called Truth. There are smaller paths, too, wending their way to the summit. The Hindu believes that all men will reach this Truth someday. What the Hindus themselves believe and practise is also a "Way". And so we have called it The Way of the Hindu.

 

 

 

 

Sivaya Namah